Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments .
Never in the history of the US has any president openly and repeatedly called for the investigation, arrest & prosecution of his political opponents. While many continue to shrug these things off and normalize them, I will never stop pointing out that this is what autocrats do. pic.twitter.com/r0dmeSvdAE
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 29, 2025
The current spending fight reflects the dizzying shift. The tea party’s core demand was fiscal responsibility, but Trump’s signature spending bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and passed with overwhelming GOP support. In the current dispute over the government shutdown, Republicans are pushing not for cuts but for an extension of Biden-era spending levels.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a rare Republican who opposes his party’s spending measures, said the tea party spirit has evaporated. “I think it’s largely been supplanted by something else,” Paul said in an interview. “We aren’t organized around ideas anymore. We’re organized around a person.”
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[M]any Trump policies appear to contradict tea party ideals. The tea party abhorred taxes; Trump has imposed high taxes on imports with his tariffs. The tea party revered the Constitution; Trump routinely tests its limits, for example by seizing power over spending and tariffs. The tea party championed the rule of law; Trump openly targets his opponents using the legal system.
More fundamentally, the tea party — driven by anger at President Barack Obama — called for a modest presidency to allow homegrown democracy to flourish. Trump is a dominant, attention-seizing leader who brooks no opposition and regularly pushes to expand his power.
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The tea party and MAGA movements are linked by at least one striking quality — a fury at liberal elites who, they contend, have coddled unworthy groups at the expense of ordinary, hardworking Americans. That is evident from the two seminal moments that launched these political tidal waves. [The Santelli rant and the Trump announcement.]
A similarity:
Liberal critics charged that the tea party was motivated at least in part by racial animus, especially as a backlash against the first Black president. Others challenged its claims of grassroots credibility, noting that billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch contributed substantial funds to build up the movement.
Similar criticism has been leveled at MAGA — that it is driven by racism and funded by billionaires.
